The Barricades

Four years ago, I and most thinking Americans had a field day, roundly ridiculing a couple of risible strains of “liberal” whinging:

  • Stars who claimed they’d “move to France” if George W. Bush won the election.
  • Vacuous lefty blog-gerbils who yapped about the Blue States seceding from the union and joining to form “The United States of Canada”, and leaving the red-voting “Jesusland” states to themselves (I had particular fun with this, as well as pointing out the political and historical illiteracy of the idea; most of Canada west of Ontario is as red as Montana).  I had extra-special fun with these morons.
  • Acres of “He’s Not My President” bumper stickers.

These were many of the same people, by the way, who tearfully demanded that conservatives “stop questioning their patriotism”, by the way.

But I digress.  The vacuous snivelling hamsters got their president finally.

It’s the other side I’m concerned about now.

We got a call on the show last Saturday from a guy who’s question echoed one I’d heard from not a few people on blogs, on Twitter, and around about in recent months – itself a reprise of something I heard a lot back in the seventies and, just a bit, in the early nineties.

“When should we stop talking and start the active resistance?”

I often ask these people – why?

“It’s never been worse than this!”

I’m starting to lose patience with some of them.

Whenever anyone says anything is “the worst ever”, they’re almost always wrong.  They almost always really mean “the worst I’ve seen”.

Politics is not the dirtiest and nastiest it’s ever been (that’d be the Jackson/Adams contest in 1828, or any election where the Hearst papers uncorked their smear machine); this is not the worst unemployment since World War II (not even close, not yet)…

…and if you’re a freedom-loving American, the Obama administration is shaping up to be a bad one, perhaps a horrible one.  But it’s by no means the worst we’ve seen on any count.

Spending?  Roosevelt’s New Deal was worse.  So far.

Gun control?  While Obama’s record is bad, he hasn’t done anything yet; Democrats from FDR through Clinton all took their swipes at the Second Amendment, from Roosevelt’s prohibitory taxes on automatic weapons (which eliminated gang warfare!) to Clinton’s “1994 Crime Bill”, which did for many less-fashionable liberties what Bigfoot does to junked cars.

Civil Liberties?  Three words; J. Edgar Hoover.  FDR, Truman, Kennedy and LBJ got away with things that’d make any of the ofay gerbils that were protesting George W. Bush’s “Abuses” gag up their skulls.  Nixon invoked executive orders that gathered unprecedented “emergency” powers unto the executive – which has had libertarians chattering amongst themselves for almost forty years.  Obama bears watching; the Dems in Congress bear even more of it.  But so far, the threats are minimal (while still intolerable).

Repackaging vacuity as “change” and “audacity?”  OK, there Obama’s in a league of his own.

Overall demoralization of the parts of this country that matter?  The seventies were worse.  They had everything we have today and more – instability, out-of-control government, the Middle East going nuts, stagflation, Jimmy Carter – and a nation that was coming off of Vietnam, which, if you don’t remember it (and I only do through the prism of a 12 year old’s memory) was the most demoralizing thing to happen to this nation since the mid-thirties.  I don’t know if anyone ever ran the numbers, but Carter’s “Malaise Speech” must have prompted more population-wide suicides than any other single event in American history (shaddap about Oberlin undergrads popping too many Valium after Kerry lost).

And even that wasn’t the worst it’s gotten.  In my father’s lifetime – well within my grandparents’ early adult lives – there were those in the mainstream who seriously considered socialism, communism, even pre-war Naziism viable models with much from which we could learn, even much to emulate for our own good.  There were those in positions of great power who actively sought to incorporate “the best” of these ideologies into our own.

The point being that, so far, the Obama Administration isn’t the worst thing our constitution, our economy and our society has faced – yet.  And while the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and the Founding Fathers well-recognized the possibility that Americans might need to throw off another tyranny someday, this isn’t it.

Not yet.

It’s a big government, and it’s getting bigger.  It’s a not-ready-for-prime-time government, run by a lot of very canny people who buffaloed a lot of our nation’s not-too-bright with a lot of breezy platitudes, and which rode to office on an almost-but-not-quite-unprecedented wave of discontent with the status quo.  It’s a government full of poltroons and ideological three-card-monte sharks.  But it’s not a communist dictatorship.

It was elected, for better or worse.  And we have three years and eight months to make the case that it should be thrown out of office and – this is the important part – nobody’s changing that.

If they do?  Well, get back to me then; it’ll be then you should think about putting on the camo and grabbing Grampa’s Garand and heading into the north woods.

Until then?  It’s still America.

As Douglas Adams said, “Don’t Panic”.

17 thoughts on “The Barricades

  1. And if you go carrying pictures of ol’ Ayn Rand
    You ain’t gonna get anyone else to understand

    Good post, Mitch.

  2. Mitch,

    You forget this is only the first 6-7 weeks of this term. If you take what the Dems have done and what they plan to do and you see that they have 80-90 more weeks in power then things look very dim in my opinion.

  3. You forget this is only the first 6-7 weeks of this term.

    I forget nothing!

    Hence I warn everyone – liberty requires vigilance.

  4. I warn everyone that when the economy turns around in spite of Obama’s failed policies we will require vigilance to NOT give credit where credit is NOT due. Let us now refuse to repeat Depression history.

  5. The desperation you are hearing comes from the magnitude of the task at hand. Not only do we have to stop the Dems from sliding the country farther towards socialism, at some point we have to actively move the government back towards conservative principles.

    Not just stopping the expansion of welfare, but rolling back the extreme programs that give money for bad behavior.
    Not just preventing state run health care, but rolling back government intervention and regulations.
    Not just shining the light on the President’s fallacy of tax cuts for those that don’t pay taxes, but actually getting those people to pay some taxes.
    Once people get used to living off the government teet, it is like pulling teeth to get them off.

    That is a 10-15 year mission at least, which is why some people start to daydream about short-cutting the process.

    Powerline had a graph recently showing federal spending as a percentage of GDP. It showed rapid increases when liberals run the country and plateaus when conservatives run the country. Which means that all we conservatives have been able to do is slow the rate that the government slides towards socialism. That’s where the frustration comes from.

  6. Let me tell you something. For the past five years, I’ve expressed a growing sense of discomfort with my alliegence with the GOP.

    It is natural for a conservative to look at the record of the last 8 years and wonder “What the hell happened here”? And it’s not just that W has thrown “us” under the bus; it’s the continual parade of skanky-assed, worthless candidates the GOP has sent sidling up for my vote pisses me off.

    I know of at least three GOP candidates for state office that have histories I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. And what is up with people like Mark Olson, or more importantly the scumbags calling themselves “Republicans” that voted to send him back to my state capital?

    And hey, I think Bobby Jindahl and Sarah Palin are great, they speak my language. But if you think I’m going to jump on a bandwagon to promote either of them for national office, you’re nuts; ain’t gonna happen.

    But what I’m really sick and tired of is so called “conservatives” telling me that I have to stay the course. I have to learn to compromise. I have to be more realistic. “Think of the alternative”.

    Hey, watch my lips: f*ck that.

    We are at the cusp of what will, I guarantee you, be a 10 year digging out process…Dave has it just right.

    Obama is growing a government that will dig roots deeper than peevee has his head up his ass. Not only that, he’s arming unions, lefty non-profits, moonbat activists with not just cash, but the force of law to protect their activities.

    And we did it to ourselves. So what say we don’t do that anymore, eh?

    We need people with not just the smarts to lead us back to power; we need people with the kind of character that earns respect and respects the trust they are given.

    I know they’re out there. I just happen to believe that perhaps they have seen the same things I’ve seen and decided they want no part of it. Maybe, if instead of grabbing our ankles, or telling ourselves that we can wait it out until the Obamanation runs it’s course, we start walking the walk, those people might be willing to give it a shot.

    In the mean time, please, don’t tell me the hot poker Obama is sticking in my ear is a cool, tropical breeze.

  7. Swiftee, you give voice to my dissatisfaction – especially with Mark Olson etal (the man’s a collosal jerk). I am less enthralled than you are with Jindahl, and not at all with Palin….

    but I so completely agree with you about “We need people with not just the smarts to lead us back to power; we need people with the kind of character that earns respect and respects the trust they are given.

    I know they’re out there.”

  8. Swiftee-
    I’m with ya. In 2008 the GOP delegates chose for presidential candidate a moderate who berated the robbers of Wall Street, blessed amnesty for Illegal aliens, and thinks political speech should be censored.
    He lost by 8 points. Any of the big GOP contenders — Giuliani, Romney, Thompson — would have done just as well.
    The GOP gave up its principles and its base with McCain and got nothing at all in return.

  9. The GOP gave up its principles and its base with McCain and got nothing at all in return.

    So don’t let that happen again!

  10. That’s right. Stick to your kooky, far-right ideals! Purge the party of all moderate tendencies! Your enemies aren’t Democrats, they’re Republicans who disagree with you on ideological matters! Heehee!

  11. Assclown sticks his foot in and shows his true ignorance once again.

    When a liberal like Assclown or peev wants to dictate what the GOP should do as a party…

  12. Pingback: EckerNet.Com » Blog Archive » Malitiously Yours

  13. Pingback: Shot in the Dark » Blog Archive » The Liberty That Dare Not Speak Its Name

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